Memphis State of Education 2024

Memphis State of Education Report 2024

A Closer Look at Public Education

We are excited to present our 2024 Memphis State of Education Report. Over the past four years, our community, just as thousands across the country, has faced the unprecedented challenge of educating students during a pandemic. In Memphis, data suggests that performance is at or near pre-pandemic levels. Community and school leaders are still working tirelessly to recover the academic, social, and emotional setbacks that occurred during one of the most devastating events in recent history.

Memphis-Shelby County has multiple authorizers and school models, and the sense of responsibility towards the education of all children is fragmented, leading to disjointed data analysis and decision-making. We present this report for three reasons:

• To share data in one cohesive report that represents the fabric of Memphis education

• To ground the community in the data so that we can understand how our education system is currently performing

• To identify trends and set data-informed goals to improve public education in our community

We are focused on the Memphis context and as such some of the data you see may be presented differently than what you are used to. We present the results in such a way that it is relevant to our local landscape, yet still comparative to state and national data. The breakdowns that we use show differences between zoned schools, optional schools, open enrollment public charter schools, and turnaround schools.

In partnership, we present this report and welcome community feedback on how we can all do better for our children in our city.

Memphis Education Fund (MEF) is a 501 c3 non-profit that has operated in the city for ten years working to improve the public-school landscape and champion a quality educational experience for all children.

Trends and Opportunities

Our report reveals sobering realities about the state of public education in Memphis, but we see opportunities to better serve our children. We also appreciate that our public education system does not exist in a silo and that there are many factors that affect student outcomes.

This report presents the data with an objective lens to build discussion around future solutions.

Academic performance continues to lag state and national averages. Our historically marginalized students trail behind their peers. Targeted investments must be made to support all children in achieving their highest potential.

Options for a high-quality public education are highly competitive, difficult to enroll in, and clustered within certain regions. Parents should be able to enroll their child into a neighborhood school that provides a quality education and prepares them for future opportunities.

Too many school buildings are either in poor condition, vacant, underutilized, or overcrowded. Resources should be reallocated and optimized to ensure all students attend school in a safe and well-equipped building.

People are having fewer children, and the overall population is declining. This will likely result in decreased enrollment and funding for schools. In the future, systems should be reevaluated in anticipation of smaller student populations.

Our School Landscape

This map shows the 225 public schools that operate in Memphis. Each dot represents a school, and the size is relative to the number of children enrolled at the school. Private schools are not represented on this map.

Approximately 112,000 students attend schools across three official state authorizers: Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS), the Achievement School District (ASD), and the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission (TPCSC). Throughout this report, we use the following four groups to categorize schools:

We have separated out MSCS into MSCS Zoned and MSCS Optional* because Optional* schools use selective enrollment policies and children must test into these schools. The definition that we use for Optional* is slightly different than the official MSCS definition because we also include selective enrollment contract schools, i.e., the three University of Memphis campus schools.

We have also created a category called Open Charter which includes both TPCSC charter schools and MSCS charter schools. Any student can enroll at these schools, regardless of where they live.

Most ASD schools are charters that have come in through the state’s turnaround program, but there have been MSCS district-run ASD schools as well.

ASD MSCS Zoned Open Charter

MSCS Optional*

Overlaying School Enrollment with Existing Capacity

Each dot on this map represents a school’s enrollment compared to its maximum capacity to hold students. Again, the larger size of the dot indicates larger enrollment. Utilization data is only available for MSCS schools; therefore not all school types are reflected on this map.

Red indicates schools that are overenrolled, with utilization rates higher than 100%, meaning that the number of students in the school exceeds the building capacity to safely contain that number of students.

Grey indicates schools that are appropriately enrolled, with utilization rates between 70% and 100%.

Purple represents schools that are under-enrolled, with utilization rates less than 70%, meaning that the building capacity is larger than the number of enrolled students.

Situations in which buildings are underutilized represent an opportunity to reallocate resources more efficiently.

Optimizing Community Resources

Anecdotally, Memphians know that many school buildings are in poor condition. However, detailed data is only available for MSCS Optional* and MSCS Zoned schools. We do not have adequate data for ASD and Open Charter schools; therefore, they are not presented here.

Building Conditions

MSCS school facilities data from 2016 shows that there are a total of 26 buildings in the district in poor condition, or approximately one out of every five buildings. According to the 2021 MSCS Reimagining 901 ESSER Plan1 , a 2014-2015 capital deferred maintenance study found that the district needs a total investment of $464 million into their facilities.

1 out of every 5 MSCS buildings are in poor condition

MSCS received $776 million as COVID relief funds from the federal government through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER). According to the district’s Reimagining 901 ESSER plan, $407 million was allocated to be spent on foundations (technology, academic space, internet, auditing and other needs). In the MSCS 23-24 approved budget2, $55 million has been invested in building safety technology, and $65 million has been approved for building improvements and new schools.

What remains to be seen is how much deferred maintenance has been resolved through ESSER funding and how much requires continued investment. There is a general need to reallocate resources efficiently as it relates to building usage. As highlighted in the district’s infrastructure planning discussions3,

29 schools are at less than 60% utilization, meaning that the buildings can enroll and house many more students.

There are 6 vacant schools and 17 vacant lots across the district.

To operate at its highest potential and ensure all students attend schools in safe and well-equipped buildings, Memphis should optimize and reallocate existing community resources.

Population and Enrollment Decline

Consistent with nationwide trends, families in Memphis are choosing to have fewer children and births have declined by 14% since 2009. Due to the declining birth rate and other population shifts, public school enrollment has declined by 7% since 2015.

The current state funding formula, Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA), allocates dollars based on student enrollment and specific needs of those students.

Therefore a decline in school enrollment will likely result in a decline in school funding.

In the future, systems should be reevaluated in anticipation of smaller student populations.

have declined 14% since 2009

enrollment has declined by 7% since 2015

How We Are Performing Academically :

Grades

In December 2023, the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) released the 2022-2023 School Letter Grades for the first time since the 2016 law was passed requiring TDOE to create an annual school rating system with an A-F letter grade.

School Letter Grades consider the following factors:

Most schools in Memphis earned a C letter grade. Only 9 out of a total of 214 schools earned an A letter grade while 94 schools earned a letter grade of D or F.

Open enrollment charter schools have the highest percentage of schools earning a C letter grade or above. However, no charter schools earned an A letter grade.

None of the Achievement School District (ASD) schools earned an A or B letter grade.

Relative to other school models, MSCS Optional* schools have the highest percentage of schools earning an A or B letter grade.

Only 2 out of 95 MSCS Zoned schools earned an A letter grade.

Opportunity to Improve Academic Performance

Academic performance in the state of Tennessee is measured by the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP). One of the factors of the Letter Grade formula is “Student Achievement” which is measured by TCAP performance.

Two content areas tested on the TCAP assessment are English Language Arts (ELA) and Math. In this report, we define TCAP proficiency as the percentage of students that “meet” or “exceed” the Tennessee academic standards for Math and ELA.

TCAP performance varies by region in Memphis. All regions underperform the state average proficiency of 36%. The highest performing region of the city is Central City East. In the table, you can see the breakdown of neighborhoods in each region.

Central City East 26% Jackson/Treadwell, Binghampton/White Station, Chickasaw Gardens/University, Sherwood/Sea Isle East

Southeast

Cordova, East/Gray’s Creek

Ridgeway, Oakhaven/Parkway Village, Hickory Hill, Southeast/Southwind

Central City West 15% Uptown, North Memphis, Midtown, Downtown, Orange Mound, South Memphis

Frayser, Raleigh, Northwest Rural, Northeast Rural

Westwood, Whitehaven

Performance Across School Types

Academic Proficiency - TCAP

Another performance metric that Tennessee uses is called the Tennessee Valued Added Assessment System (TVAAS). Whereas TCAP measures student proficiency at one point in time, TVAAS measures student academic growth from year to year. TVAAS is measured on a level of 1 to 5, where a 1 represents lower than expected growth and a 5 represents higher than expected growth.

MSCS Optional* schools outperform all other school types in English Language Arts (ELA) and Math. This is expected because Optional schools have selective enrollment, and their student populations have had to meet a higher academic standard in order to qualify for enrolling at that school.

Open charter schools outperform MSCS Zoned schools in both Math and ELA proficiency. The ASD performs the lowest out of the four categories.

Opportunity to Close the Achievement Gap

This breakdown looks at the following historically underserved student populations:

• African American • Economically Disadvantaged2

• Hispanic

• Students with Disabilities

The graphs below show a combined average TCAP proficiency scores for ELA and Math. Several of these student groups surpass the Memphis average of 17%, but there are inequities across subgroups. For example, ‘Non-Economically Disadvantaged’ students score higher than ‘Economically Disadvantaged’ by 12 percentage points. ‘White’ students score higher than ‘African American’ students by 28 percentage points and ‘Hispanic’ students by 24. ‘Students without Disabilities’ score 16 percentage points higher than ‘Students with Disabilities’.

These student groups are also differently served depending on what type of school they attend. MSCS Optional* school students, except for Hispanic students, perform better than their peers attending other school types. Hispanic students attending open charters perform slightly better than they do in MSCS Optional* schools. There is a marginal difference when comparing the performance of students with disabilities across all types of schools.

Most of the school types for these demographics of students do not reach the same performance as their peers on the State level. There is a need for intentional investments in academic supports for each of these subgroups.

How Memphis Compares to Peer Cities

National Assessment of Education Progress, or NAEP, is a measurement of student achievement administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). NAEP is standardized for every student across the nation, which gives us insight into how results can vary across states and urban districts and among student demographics.

Utilizing the 2022 NAEP testing and demographic data, we selected six cities to compare with Shelby County: Cleveland, Atlanta, Baltimore, Detroit, Louisville, and the District of Columbia (DC). These cities were selected because of similarities across city and county population, poverty rate, and ethnic makeup data from 2021 and 2022. Cities that were similar across at least three of these criteria and had a population of less than one million were labeled as comparable cities.

Shelby County outperforms in both Math and Reading for 4th and 8th grade in comparison to Baltimore, Cleveland, and Detroit. Shelby County underperforms relative to Louisville, DC, and Atlanta. In each of these four data breakdowns, Shelby County performs at rates less than half of the national average.

Elementary Grades Show Progress

State assessment data from school year 22-23 indicates that Memphis area schools are slowly recovering from the impact of the pandemic. However, collectively they still trail behind state averages on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP).

MSCS Optional* schools achieved the highest percentage of 3rd-5th grade students who met or exceeded proficiency on the ELA TCAP at 32%, but were below the state average of 39%.

On the Math TCAP, MSCS Optional* schools achieved the highest percentage of 3rd-5th grade students who met or exceeded proficiency at 28%, which is 13 percentage points lower than the state average of 41%.

School year 22-23 TVAAS data shows that Open Charter elementary schools are demonstrating higher than expected growth with 75% of schools receiving a TVAAS Level 4 and 5, compared to 29% of MSCS Zoned and 18% of MSCS Optional* schools. No ASD elementary schools are demonstrating significant growth.

Stark Challenges in Middle Grades

For three out of the four school types, with the exception of Optional* schools, middle grades are performing at least 18 percentage points lower than the state average in ELA and are performing significantly lower than the Optional* schools.

MSCS Optional* schools achieved the highest percentage of 6th-8th grade students who met or exceeded proficiency on the ELA TCAP at about 30%, slightly below the state average of 33%.

On the Math TCAP, MSCS Optional* schools achieved the highest percentage of 6th-8th grade students who met or exceeded proficiency at around 22%, which is 14 percentage points lower than the state average.

School year 22-23 TVAAS data reveals that Open Charter schools have the highest percentage of their schools earning a high TVAAS score, with 85% of open charters earning a TVAAS Level 4 or 5.

Significant Gaps Persist in High School

On the ELA TCAP, high school students in MSCS Optional* schools perform better than other school types with an ELA proficiency of 34%. However, this is still 8 percentage points below the state average of 42%.

On the Math TCAP, MSCS Optional* high schools achieved the highest percentage of students who met or exceeded proficiency at 14%, nearly 10 percentage points lower than the state average.

TVAAS data reveals that all school models are grappling with how to support student growth in high school. Even for MSCS Optional* high schools, over 40% of schools are performing at lower-than-expected growth with scores of TVAAS Level 1 and Level 2.

This data demonstrates that Memphis high schools are falling behind state averages and that not all schools are growing students equally.

Preparing Students for Better Futures

Graduation rates in Memphis high schools are nearing the state average of 91% with open enrollment charter schools graduating 88% of their students and MSCS Optional schools graduating 86% of their students.

The ACT test is a curriculum-based education assessment used for college admission that provides an important measure into understanding student college and career readiness. The state average composite ACT score for the 2023 graduating class is 19 points, while the 2022 national average is about 20.

Despite possessing the highest ACT score average for Memphis area schools, MSCS Optional* schools trail the state average by a point.

To qualify for the TN HOPE Scholarship Program, which would provide students attending eligible TN colleges with scholarship and grant assistance, students need to achieve an ACT score of 21 points.

Although Memphis area graduation rates are competitive with the state’s average, Shelby County data from 2021 shows that only 49% of graduating high school students enroll in college or trade school, relative to a state average of 53%. This indicates that graduation data alone is not the best measure

The Memphis School Guide contains the latest information on all Memphis schools. Use this guide to make an informed decision on the best school for your child.

memphisschoolguide.org

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